The long wait

By the time you are reading this piece, the first set of the 2015 elections would have been over, other things being equal. But we have the second leg in less than two weeks, precisely on April 11. Ordinarily, the elections ought to have come and gone on February 14 (Presidential and National Assembly) and February 28 (governorship and state houses of assembly), but were postponed to March 28 and April 11, respectively, essentially by the military chiefs who said they could not guarantee security if the elections were held as earlier scheduled. The thinking in government then was that, among others, the Chibok girls abducted in April last year would have been found within the six weeks and the Boko Haram war would have been contained. Then, most importantly, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would have had enough time to perfect rigging plans, splash dollars on willing and unwilling Nigerians, to boost its chances at the polls.

While the government has been celebrating the defeat of the insurgents with the assistance of troops from Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic, mum has been the word on the Chibok girls. Apparently, there does not seem to be any hope in sight about their whereabouts yet, and, in their stead, the government decided to renovate their school as if that is of any meaning to the girls’ parents. Anyway, the Goodluck Jonathan administration is a master when it comes to ‘promise and fail’. It would again promise that the search for the girls continues when indeed nobody is talking about them again, if we know this administration as we should by now. Then, his government would go to sleep again only to wake up two months to the 2019 elections (if it finds itself in the saddle once again) to start frantic attempts to right the wrongs it could not address in the last nine or 10 years.

But one thing that had been agitating the minds of many Nigerians is the issue of the card readers that the ruling party does not want used for the elections. As it were, it seemed the last joker the ruling party wanted to use in its bid to have a field day in the election. Mercifully, last week, the courts, including the Court of Appeal and the Federal High Court said INEC should go ahead with the card readers. Indeed, the Federal High Court which ruled on the matter on Friday asked both the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke, to appear before it on April 24, to look at the illegality or otherwise of the use of the card readers for a general election. Even baby lawyers know the meaning of that. So, those who might have been hinging their hope on the court stopping INEC from using the card readers have to return to the drawing board for the next item in their inexhaustible bag of mischief. By the time they begin to perfect that, the election would have been over. But it is gratifying that our courts have not allowed themselves to be used by politicians who are ready to bribe God if He would be available for bribing, or bring the roof down on everybody where that fails, just to satisfy their selfish urge for political power which, unfortunately, they do not know how to use. One must especially commend the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, who had earlier warned judges against any hanky-panky, especially in political cases. This is by far different from some of the previous general elections which produced billionaire judges but which messed up our judiciary and the electoral process.

One terrible thing about the PDP is its futile attempts to hide behind one finger in its opposition to some of the processes and procedures guiding the 2015 general elections. Take the postponement of the elections for example. The ruling party had tried surreptitiously and severally to make it look as if the decision was that of INEC. But when it was clear the electoral commission was not going to play that kind of ball that would have meant an indictment of itself, thereby strengthening the hands of those who had been fishing for excuses to remove the commission’s boss, the National Security Adviser took the responsibility of announcing the government’s position that the country was not safe enough for the election.

There is also the case of the Young Democratic Party (YDP) that was threatening to hold its party primaries on March 26 and 27, a day to the general elections, on the strength of a court judgment that ordered INEC to register it. Again, even a baby lawyer knows that the judge never issued any order to the effect that it should participate in this year’s elections because the courts are aware that issuing such an order was futile, given that ballot papers for the elections had been printed and it is late in the day to disrupt the process simply because of an unknown party that is probably serving some masters in power who have suddenly developed a phobia for elections. Even if YDP was right, what is to be done is to weigh its interest against that of the nation. Obviously, national interest would prevail. And that was what the court did by clarifying that it never said the party should be included in the ballot papers for this year’s elections. Imagine, a party that probably cannot muster 250,000 votes now wanting to be an issue in a general election? Who does not know that something beneath the river is beating the drums for the whirligigs that are ‘dancing’ on it? But that is how they had been using inconsequential matters to cheat Nigerians.

When we take a trip down memory lane, we would see how the PDP Governors Forum itself came into being. When you have people who cannot do a simple arithmetic in an election involving only 35 people because they wanted to be fraudulent, then you can understand their frustration with card readers. As a matter of fact, not a few people felt part of the reasons they fought for postponement of the elections was to see if they could make INEC adopt both the Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) and Temporary Voter’s Cards (TVCs) simultaneously for the elections so they could reenact their usual rigging at the polls. When that campaign failed, they also sponsored some people to raise questions with card readers. But the meeting of the PDP governors in Lagos a few weeks back clearly exposed the party as the brain behind the scathing opposition to the use of the card readers. That is their style. The government even toyed with the idea of Interim Government, can you imagine!

The primitive manner the Jonathan government has been running Nigeria is even reflected in the way and manner some of its officials are stealing from the country’s coffers. Indeed, to refer to what is happening under this administration as stealing is putting it mildly; it is also primitive as in primitive accumulation. Unfortunately, the president still believes the rate of corruption is exaggerated in the country. He is asking for four years to address the corruption in the oil sector! A leader who calls the gargantuan corruption in this country mere stealing is not fit to continue in office because by the time he wakes up to the reality, it would have been too late. Just as the country is now sweating to bring back the Chibok girls when it should have done so with ease had the president believed early enough that the girls were truly kidnapped.

The world must have been shocked about how Nigeria degenerated to the extent that some of these developments have come to be our lot in the twenty-first century. But a country cannot rise beyond the level of those governing it. Even some of the people that we thought were coming from places where best practices reign supreme, where transparency and accountability are their creed suddenly sink the moment they join the Jonathan presidency. They see their critics as irritants and pollutants that are only out to discredit them. Take Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for example, how can she see anyone who says she has not managed the economy well in bad light when all the indices point to that, from the exchange rate to unemployment, etc? All she offers are statistics that do not have any bearing with reality. The good thing though is that many Nigerians are now prepared to take their destiny in their hands, in spite of the rural and primitive devices of the Jonathan government to keep the country in perpetual bondage and darkness. Whether all their satanic plots added to or subtracted from their once upon the biggest party in Africa would be known in a few hours from now.